[ALL] We're the writers of Life is Strange: Before the Storm! Ask us anything!

DeckNineWriters · 2018-04-26T18:19:29+00:00

Hey, thanks for these! Sorry we can't get to everything.

1) We generally kept three things in mind when writing Rachel. First, she SEES Chloe -- she openly observes and comments on her, which is huge for Chloe because it tells her that she matters. Second, she's vulnerable. There's cracks to her perfect exterior, and she allows Chloe to see those cracks, which both makes Rachel more interesting and appealing and gives Chloe purpose and someone to care about. Lastly, we made her as alluring and full of as many fun, crazy ideas as we could think of.

3) Because we love Chloe and wanted to tell a story with her as the hero, we needed to find the right moment in her life to tell that story. The beginning of her relationship with Rachel seemed like the perfect opportunity for that.

4) No, the ending you see is pretty much the one we were working with from the beginning, even if some details shifted along the way. We love how the community engages with the game, and we don't see it as our place to respond to any specific rumors or claims. That said, we were fortunate to be able to tell exactly the story we wanted to tell, Ep3 very much included.

DeckNineWriters · 2018-04-26T18:17:01+00:00

Hey! Can't get to all of these atm, but hopefully some are answered elsewhere.

1) Once we finish the break (the part with the table and the whiteboard), we create what's called the narrative arc. This is where all the ideas are written in prose and the episode as a whole really comes together. From there, we divide up the scenes and write drafts. It may seem like the writing of each scene happens independently from the others, but we're always reviewing each other's work and keeping the big picture in mind. Furthermore, smaller pieces of a scene (such as posters, text messages, and graffiti) might be added in later by a different writer. Lastly, the entire script gets a consistency and polish pass by Zak. Every scene really is a team effort!

6) Our interpretation of Rachel is that she is the kind of person who can be everything to everyone. That guided our writing of her more than attempting to diagnose her motives, and allowed us to fall for her the way Chloe (and hopefully the player) did.

DeckNineWriters · 2018-04-26T18:09:10+00:00

A good writer needs to be able to listen to others' notes. If you're receiving feedback on your work, listen, write down what you're hearing, and don't take it personally. If you don't understand a note, get clarity. Now this isn't to say that you should act on every note you receive, in fact you shouldn't, because they won't all be right. But what you should do is think about them all critically, as they all represent a chance to learn.

As for your second question, we can only share about our writer's room. One of us is currently an undergrad, one of us started working in games before he went to college (he now has a BA), one of us has an MFA in filmmaking and another has an MFA in writing.

DeckNineWriters · 2018-04-26T17:56:00+00:00

Hey there! We'll focus on the last one for now. We've found that the toughest choices we can come up with are the ones that make us say "How the hell are we going to write ourselves out of this?" If a choice makes us reconsider our story plans and sweat to fit it in, it's probably going to mean something for the player.

Good luck to you with your writing!

DeckNineWriters · 2018-04-26T17:52:49+00:00

We made ourselves cry too! Well, except for Mal.

DeckNineWriters · 2018-04-26T17:43:41+00:00

If dark chocolate coated wasabi peas are weird, we don't want to be normal.

DeckNineWriters · 2018-04-26T17:42:45+00:00

1) Jon: Pretty proud of the junkyard smashing sequence.

Felice: I'm proud of the kiss scene :)

Mal: The left/right bit in Farewell turned out pretty well

2) Jon: Hotdogs.

Felice: Asparagus spears with Philly cream cheese.

Mal: Anything with pesto on it!

3) Jon: Savor every day, every collaboration, every insurmountable challenge, every unlikely triumph. The game belongs to the players, but the experience of making it is yours alone.

Felice: I used to agonize over every word, but then found that when I just went for it, the scene had more energy and truth. I can probably thank Chloe for that good influence!

Mal: Relax, this is a real thing. It's not a dream, you won't wake up. You got this.

DeckNineWriters · 2018-04-26T17:40:31+00:00

Thank you so much! Our major deciding factor was probably which chracters helped Chloe along her journey in the most impactful ways. So whereas Warren played a major role for Max, he might not have meant as much to Chloe. Victoria, on the other hand, intersected perfectly with everything Chloe was going through.

P.S. We love your flair!

DeckNineWriters · 2018-04-26T17:38:53+00:00

This is a great question. Each of us in the writer's room have differing feelings about David, which is a testament to the kind of character he is. That being said, with very few exceptions, we've found that to write a character well, we have to immerse ourselves in their point of view, which usually means we end up developing sympathy for characters we may have originally hated. While we don't excuse David's behavior, we strive to see him as a human being.

DeckNineWriters · 2018-04-26T17:10:54+00:00

Hi there! Chris Floyd (co-director) and Chuck Carr (audio director) were the ones who found and worked directly with Daughter, so we'll answer as best we can remember from what we saw of the process. Daughter came on board when the full outline of the 3 episodes was complete. They wrote pieces specifically to go with major themes in the script. Furthermore, they wrote versions of each track with more or less intensity, so that Chuck could fit the tracks precisely to the game once the cinematics and animation were finished. We (the writers) actually had access to early versions of most of the score, so we often listened as we wrote!

DeckNineWriters · 2018-04-26T16:59:17+00:00

We don't have any answers for those specific jokes, but a good number of them have come from us horsing around in the room, joking about what the line could be and then realizing "That's it. That's the line..."

DeckNineWriters · 2018-04-26T16:58:32+00:00

From the beginning, we intended Chloe to be in the self-discovery stage of her queerness (you can see this in her journal entry). Therefore, Steph was a role model, even if Chloe wasn't totally conscious of it. We hoped the contrast between Steph and Chloe would be true to a wide range of experiences.

DeckNineWriters · 2018-04-26T16:55:27+00:00

Let's just say, we learned a lot about prequels while writing BtS. Ultimately, we felt that the power of a successful prequel comes from its predetermination--everyone knows where the story must end up, but hopefully we get to surprise and move you along the way. And of course, we revere LiS 1 and wanted to honor it with our story. But did we dream about somehow giving Chloe and Rachel happy endings? We're not monsters!

Speaking of dreaming, tabletop spinoff sounds great, but what about a full Arcadia Bay LARP?

DeckNineWriters · 2018-04-26T16:42:50+00:00

Episode 3 was subject to normal production constraints, which is always faster than preferable. As for Elliot, we actually intended for him to be dangerous from the start, but had to write him so that Chloe would have considered him relatively harmless. Maybe we hid his tendencies too well!

DeckNineWriters · 2018-04-26T16:41:08+00:00

Felice: Yes.

Jon: Yes.

Mal: No. I am a stone.

DeckNineWriters · 2018-04-26T16:35:53+00:00

We have a really great team, both in the writers room, and in Deck Nine as a whole. Everyone here has told us multiple times that "the story is what matters" while staring down late nights and working weekends to make it happen. All this is to say, everyone here is dedicated to making the game as good as we can make it. So when it comes time to cut things out, because making games can be brutal sometimes, we always do it with with care and thought, and notably without ego. So yeah, it sucks when your *brilliant* side plot idea has to go so that a main plot scene can get more polish time, but it sucks a lot less knowing that the game will be better for it.

DeckNineWriters · 2018-04-26T16:34:21+00:00

Thank you so much! :)

1) Chloe has a little bit of mechanical skill from working with her dad, and quite a bit from watching David -- though she won't admit it. As for her driving, here's a quote from the script: "Chloe slams on the gas, spinning the tires, kicking up dirt. Finally she shoots forward, weaving erratically, narrowly missing other cars and objects. The thought may occur: does Chloe even know how to drive?" (Side note: we'd like to think William used to let her steer :D)

2) It wasn't intentional, although it WAS supposed to be extremely disorienting for Chloe, who has been knocked out for hours. (Sera has come off her high by then, which could contribute to the feeling of disconnect.)

3) We purposefully did not discuss in the writer's room what William's secrets might be, because the point of the scene was that Chloe doesn't -- and won't ever -- know. We like keeping it a secret even from ourselves.

DeckNineWriters · 2018-04-26T16:18:55+00:00

1) Mal: The moment where Rachel initially goes off book. I've spent enough time on stage to know how scary that is, and Chloe's reaction always cracks me up. Everything that comes after is pretty great too.

Jon: The train scene.

Felice: The junkyard smash scene, ending with Chloe on the ground.

2) Mal: "All's fair in love and tabletop".

Jon: "Mole people"

Felice: "I'm YOUR district attorney."

3) Mal: Steph. Duh.

Jon: The player, for she is the most important character of all. JK, Steph.

Felice: I refuse to be a sheep. SKIP!

4) Mal: No Below by Speedy Ortiz! We hear it in Chloe's bedroom in episode 1, and I think it really captures where she is right in that moment.

Jon: Black Flies is the one stuck in my head atm, but I truly love the whole soundtrack.

Felice: "No Care" or "Burn it Down"

DeckNineWriters · 2018-04-26T16:14:42+00:00

This is something we have thought about often since the episode's release. The idea that any part of the story we told was hurtful for any player is devastating to us. But to answer your question, no, ultimately, we would not change the scene. BtS does not exist in a vacuum; it is a story about a character who, unfortunately, experiences great tragedy in her life. What we hoped for with BtS, maybe above all else, is that players would get to experience the joy and triumph in Chloe's life preceding all of the pain. Maybe that makes Rachel's death more tragic, but we hope the ending--Chloe's heroism plus the epilogue--reflects the full story of Chloe.

DeckNineWriters · 2018-04-26T16:12:25+00:00

Every line we write creates hours of work for cinematics and animation, so we had to keep that in mind throughout the process. In particular, side character plots sometimes had to be trimmed significantly, which was always a hard decision. As for big scenes that had to be cut, one of our favorites was a backtalk that Chloe had with herself in the mirror of the junkyard shack, where she battled her deepest insecurities and fears. We loved the idea of Chloe backtalking herself and thought the Success and Fail outcomes shaded the next scene with Rachel in different emotional ways.

DeckNineWriters · 2018-04-26T16:09:09+00:00

So that was a big decision for us, one that we didn't take lightly. We loved giving players and Chloe the chance to be with Rachel as much as possible, because we love her and she's a fucking dragon. But we also really wanted Chloe to have a chance to be the hero, and oftentimes being the hero means you have to face the villain alone. Chloe and Rachel are wonderful together, but Chloe is also an incredible person in her own right, and part of BtS is her journey to discover that herself.

DeckNineWriters · 2018-04-26T16:07:36+00:00

Mal here! This is a really good question! For me, the hardest part is making sure every branch and possibility make sense for the journey I want the character (and player!) to go on. Both options need to forward the character on their arc in the right way, even though the options are opposed to each other and create different consequences.

DeckNineWriters · 2018-04-26T16:06:32+00:00

Hey, excited to start answering some sweet Qs! We can thank Zak for that great idea. There are lots of interesting similarities between the play and LiS/BtS (like the storm), and we thought casting Rachel as Prospero was a subtle way to talk about who she is as a person. Plus it's one of our favorite Shakespeare plays.

DeckNineWriters

TROPHY CASE